Six-strike Copyright Alert System goes into effect today

As mentioned previously, the Copyright Alert System goes into effect starting today, which gives internet service providers the power to issue six strikes to it users before throttling your internet. It sounds pretty intense and lenient at the same time, since six strikes is quite a few times to screw up before the ISP calls it enough.

Essentially, the Copyright Alert System is just the latest implementation in a line of anti-piracy initiatives, and it works in the same fashion as past systems have worked. Movie studios and music labels will join public P2P networks to see if their content is being pirated, and if it is, they'll contact the ISP. From there the ISP will contact the offender and issue a strike.

These strikes will come in three different steps or phases. Your first two strikes will be all about education, where the ISP will point you to information on how you can obtain content legally. The next level is acknowledgement, where ISPs will force users to complete something, such as watching an anti-piracy video, and the last phase is throttling your internet connection, since the ISP can't legally cut you off.

However, it doesn't seem like a huge deal at this point yet. From the looks of it, it seems that users will have to be caught four times before they're actually legitimately punished. Of course, no one can really say how well this new system will work, but if it's like any other system that ISPs have tried in the past, it probably won't make a huge splash at this point.